Great Links: Web Encryption without SSL

August 22, 2011 digitaleagle Javascript, PHP, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I have been working on getting data transfer encrypted for parts of my website, and I think I have a solution! Rather than encrypt all of the site with an expensive SSL certificate, I am just going to encrypt the AJAX calls.

Here are the resources that I am using:

On the Javascript side — pidCrypt
On the PHP side — Stevish’s PHP Encryption
jQuery plugin for pidCrypt

Do you have any experience with this or anything similar? Comments are welcome!

Update: I am still trying to get it working… Check out my question here.

Update: Here’s a nice link to help with generating the key: madboa.com: OpenSSL Command-Line HOWTO — How do I generate an RSA key?

Update: I haven’t been able to get pidCrypt to work. I found another tool that looks very good called jCryption, but I can’t make it work because my host doesn’t provide the bcMath library. I found a couple more helpful pages here and here.

Kernel 2.6.40 and Broadcom Wireless Broken!

August 20, 2011 digitaleagle Fedora, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Unfortunately, I don’t have any fixes at this point. But, I do have some links. If you have any ideas, please comment below. I am sure I am not the only one with this problem.

I have updated the kernel with YumEx, and now I have two different 2.6.40 kernels. When I boot into either of those kernels, my wireless is gone! Currently, the only way I can make the wireless work is to select the 2.6.38 kernel at the grub menu during boot.

That is not a good long term solution because I believe that yum only saves the last two kernels previous to the current one. So, if I update the kernel one more time, I think 2.6.38 will fall off the list! That’s is why I haven’t just updated the /boot/grub/grub.conf to make the 2.6.38 kernel default.

Here are some links that may help:

One link that I found suggested adding a line to the modprobe configuration to blacklist bcma. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me. That module doesn’t seem to be installed. Do I need to install it?

[skp@pecan ~]$ sudo modprobe bcma
[sudo] password for skp: 
FATAL: Module bcma not found.

Another post suggested blacklisting b44. That one didn’t work for me either. It just made the Wired connection not work.

In my old kernel, here is what things look like:

[skp@pecan ~]$ echo 'Kernel Version: ' `uname -r` && echo 'lspci Info:' && lspci -v | awk '/Ether|Net/,/^$/'
Kernel Version:  2.6.38.8-35.fc15.x86_64
lspci Info:
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 01f2
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe5fe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: b44
	Kernel modules: b44

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe8fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: wl
	Kernel modules: wl, ssb

In, the new kernel, here is what it looks like:

[skp@pecan ~]$ echo 'Kernel Version: ' `uname -r` && echo 'lspci Info:' && lspci -v | awk '/Ether|Net/,/^$/'
Kernel Version:  2.6.40.3-0.fc15.x86_64
lspci Info:
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 01f2
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe5fe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: b44
	Kernel modules: b44

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe8fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
	Kernel modules: ssb

Installing MS Office on Fedora 15 — try 2

August 19, 2011 digitaleagle Fedora, How To, Microsoft Office, Uncategorized, Wine 4 Comments

This is my second attempt at writing this article. Office hasn’t been playing nicely with Fedora, but I finally have it working! This How-To is not as clean as I would like, but it works.

First, let’s explore the motivation for installing Microsoft Office on Linux. I would venture to guess that most if not all Linux distributions have LibreOffice in their repositories. That is a full-featured office package that will probably do most of what you want. In my opinion, Microsoft Office is just a little bit better, but that comes with a huge price tag! The value is definitely on LibreOffice’s side. But, here are some reasons you may consider Office instead:

if you can get Office cheaper — many times you can get Office much cheaper through student licensing or corporate licensing
if you do a lot of work on Office documents in conjunction with other Microsoft users — LibreOffice can open, edit, and save MS Office documents, but when you go back and forth, you will probably have to constantly fix small formatting issues

My motivation comes from working with textbooks. I was working with large Word documents, and since they were so large, reformatting images and screenshots were not feasible every time we passed them back and forth between LibreOffice and MS Office. Plus, Office was bought for me so the cost was not an issue!
So, with no further adue, let me walk you through what I did to install it on my Fedora 15 OS:

Installing Microsoft Office 2007 on Fedora 15

August 16, 2011 digitaleagle Fedora, Microsoft Office, Uncategorized, Wine 10 Comments

I needed to install Microsoft Office 2007 on my Fedora 15 installation, and my first step was to look for a tutorial that might help clear up any gotchas before I hit them. Unfortunately, the closest I found was these two articles:

So, my thought was to create my own how to. Instead, I think I have created more of a how NOT to! By the time I was done with all of this, it didn’t work. So, don’t bother with this article if you are trying to figure out how to make it work. If you are looking on something to develop to make the world better for Linux users, look no more. We need help!

Installing Flash on Fedora 15

August 2, 2011 digitaleagle Fedora, Uncategorized Leave a comment

I found a plethora of information about installing Flash on Fedora 15, so I am not going to go into detail. Here’s the decision I made though: I had to decide between going with the standard 32bit plugin wrapped to work on 64bit or use the experimental native 64bit plugin. I chose the 32bit plugin because I have made enough bleeding edge choices that haven’t worked out easily. Flash is just one of those things that you don’t expect a lot of features from, you just want the web pages to work.

So, below are the commands I used. Please follow the links at the end for better instructions. If you have trouble, maybe these commands will help give you an idea of what worked for me.

Downloaded from
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Then ran:

su -c "yum update"

su -c 'yum install nspluginwrapper.{x86_64,i686} alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 --disablerepo=adobe-linux-i386'
su -c 'yum install flash-plugin'

su -c "ln -s /usr/lib64/mozilla/plugins-wrapped/nswrapper_32_64.libflashplayer.so /usr/lib64/chromium-browser/plugins"

I also did these extra Adobe things:

su -c "yum install AdobeReader_enu"

su -c "yum install gtk2-devel.i686 nss.i686 libxml2-devel.i686 libxslt.i686 \ 
gnome-keyring.i686 rpm-devel.i686 rpm-build rpm-build-libs.i686  \
libgnome-keyring.i686 ld-linux.so.2 libdbus-glib-1.so.2 libhal.so.1 \
libXt.so.6 libDCOP.so.4 nss-devel.i686"

su -c "yum install adobeair"

Resources

LogMeIn Hamachi on Fedora 15

August 2, 2011 digitaleagle Fedora, LogMeIn, Troubleshooting, Uncategorized 4 Comments

The time has come to get my LogMeIn VPN working again. The learning curve was not near as steep as this time (I didn’t loose any hair!), but I did still have a few issues.

First, I downloaded the RPM from Logmein’s website: logmein-hamachi-2.0.1.15-1.x86_64.rpm

When I went to use the VPN, I got this message:

Hamachi does not seem to be running. 
Run '/etc/init.d/logmein-hamachi start' to start daemon.

That seemed like an easy fix, but it wouldn’t start. I got this error message when I tried to start the service:

/etc/init.d/logmein-hamachi: line 28: /lib/lsb/init-functions: No such file or directory

To fix it, I found a bug reference that suggested I should install a package like redhat-lsb-4.0-6.fc15. You should be able to do it with this command:

su -c "yum install redhat-lsb"

After installing that, the VPN service started fine:

su -c "/etc/init.d/logmein-hamachi start"
Starting LogMeIn Hamachi VPN tunneling engine logmein-hamac[  OK  ]

One thing I did notice is that the service doesn’t automatically start like it did when I was using it on Ubuntu. I don’t know why, but this is actually what I want anyway. I can just start the service when I want to use it with:

su -c "/etc/init.d/logmein-hamachi start"

Great Links: Fedora 15 Quick Tips

July 29, 2011 digitaleagle Chrome, Fedora, Uncategorized Leave a comment

By accident, I ran across several links that seemed very helpful for getting situated in Fedora 15:

Chrome Extensions Quick Fix

I was able to get Chromium installed, but it keeps mentioning that “Tampermonkey has crashed.” Thomas’ Blog suggested running this command to fix extensions:

restorecon -R -v -F ~

Hallelujah! My Tampermonkey works. I was hoping that it wasn’t my backing up the profile.

Flash

I went to this link as suggested:

Adobe’s Flash Page

Since, I am running the 64bit version, I opted to follow the 64bit link.

This looks a little complicated. I may save this for another day. Please comment if you have any advise here. I was hoping for an RPM I could install that would just stay up to date. Flash is something I just want to take for granted rather than tinker with. The tar bar for Flash 11 has a bunch of directories and files. I need to read up on it more.

Gnome Shell Tweak

Multiple sites recommended this tool. So, I installed it:

su -c 'yum -y install gnome-tweak-tool'

Here are some of the tweaks, I found useful:

Shell — Show date in clock (turned on)
Shell — Laptop lid close action (changed from Suspend to Blank)

More Packages and Stuff

Ok, I don’t want to go through each of these individually, so I’ll just throw them out there the same way the Chema did on his blog:

su -c 'yum -y install gnome-tweak-tool gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-plugins-bad-free-extras gstreamer-plugins-bad-nonfree gstreamer-plugins-ugly gstreamer-ffmpeg audacious audacious-plugins unrar java-1.6.0-openjdk java-1.6.0-openjdk-plugin gparted vlc gimp gimp-data-extras gimp-fourier-plugin gimp-lqr-plugin gimp-resynthesizer gimpfx-foundry yum-plugin-fastestmirror'

–Thanks Chema

I also did the DVD support thing:

su -c 'yum -y install libdvdread libdvdnav'

And, I have the 64bit installed, so I ran this:

su -c 'rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/repo/15/x86_64/libdvdcss-1.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm'

Check out this page for the 32bit command.

SELinux and Performance

I have been struggling with my laptop running slow. It comes to a crawl when I run my Java/Swing application and VMWare at the same time. I found this tidbit about performance on Chema’s blog: “If you are experiencing poor performance, you may want to check what the current SELinux status is”.

I edited the file /etc/selinux/config and changed it from enforcing to permissive:

Thankfully, it seems to have fixed my problem.

Gnome Shell Extensions

Chema’s command does a good job showing the list of extensions. It is a good start for seeing what is available already:

yum search extension | grep gnome-shell

I found a few other resources on extensions:

I like the alternative status menu. To me, it is kind of absurd to not have a shutdown option in your menu! But, this adds it back:

yum install gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu

Note: After installing this extension, I found on the cheat sheet that you can use the Alt key with the default menu to get a Power Off option.

The places menu is another good one:

yum install gnome-shell-extensions-places-menu

The weather and a11y look good, too, but I may save those for another post since they look a little more in depth.

One more trick I learned is that after installing the extensions, you can restart the shell by pressing Alt-F2 and then typing r.

Gnome Do

I was able to easily install Gnome Do with Add/Remove Software, but I had several issues with getting it to work. One of the issues, I already talked about. You have to install an extra dependency: gnome-desktop-2.

Furthermore, you also have to change the Summons key. Digital Tool Company recommended Alt-F3. You can do that from the preferences menu option once you start Gnome-Do.

Or, when you first open Gnome do, you can use the menu there:

Then, you can change the summons key here:

Stay tuned as I continue to get used to Fedora!

Gnome Do on Fedora 15

July 28, 2011 digitaleagle Fedora, Gnome-Do, Uncategorized 1 Comment

I tried to install Gnome Do on my new Fedora 15 installation, and everything went smooth at first. But, the problem comes when you try to use it.

These are the two packages I installed:

And, for the plugins:

So, I tried to launch it from the command line. I receive a number of these errors:

[Error 12:31:11.906] Could not load desktop item: libgnome-desktop-2.so.17

Then, when I tried to open the preferences, it crashed with this error:


Marshaling activate signal
Exception in Gtk# callback delegate
  Note: Applications can use GLib.ExceptionManager.UnhandledException to handle the exception.
System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.DllNotFoundException: libgnome-desktop-2.so.17
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) Gnome.DesktopItem:gnome_desktop_item_new_from_uri (intptr,int,intptr&)
  at Gnome.DesktopItem.NewFromUri (System.String uri, DesktopItemLoadFlags flags) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.Platform.Linux.SystemService.get_AutoStartFile () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.Platform.Linux.SystemService.IsAutoStartEnabled () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.UI.GeneralPreferencesWidget.get_AutostartEnabled () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.UI.GeneralPreferencesWidget..ctor () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.UI.PreferencesWindow..ctor () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.Core.Controller.ShowPreferences () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.Universe.PreferencesItem.Run () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at Do.UI.MainMenu+<MenuItemFromRunnableItem>c__AnonStorey12.<>m__2B (System.Object sender, System.EventArgs e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) System.Reflection.MonoMethod:InternalInvoke (System.Reflection.MonoMethod,object,object[],System.Exception&)
  at System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  --- End of inner exception stack trace ---
  at System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Reflection.MethodBase.Invoke (System.Object obj, System.Object[] parameters) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Delegate.DynamicInvokeImpl (System.Object[] args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.MulticastDelegate.DynamicInvokeImpl (System.Object[] args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at System.Delegate.DynamicInvoke (System.Object[] args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at GLib.Signal.ClosureInvokedCB (System.Object o, GLib.ClosureInvokedArgs args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at GLib.SignalClosure.Invoke (GLib.ClosureInvokedArgs args) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
  at GLib.SignalClosure.MarshalCallback (IntPtr raw_closure, IntPtr return_val, UInt32 n_param_vals, IntPtr param_values, IntPtr invocation_hint, IntPtr marshal_data) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0 
   at GLib.ExceptionManager.RaiseUnhandledException(System.Exception e, Boolean is_terminal)
   at GLib.SignalClosure.MarshalCallback(IntPtr raw_closure, IntPtr return_val, UInt32 n_param_vals, IntPtr param_values, IntPtr invocation_hint, IntPtr marshal_data)
   at Gtk.Application.gtk_main()
   at Gtk.Application.Run()
   at Do.Do.Main(System.String[] args)

The solution was to install the gnome-desktop-2 package.

I may still need to tweak the shortcut key, but that at least solves the crash.

Rant: Switching from Ubuntu to Fedora

July 28, 2011 digitaleagle Fedora, Gnome, Story, Troubleshooting, Ubuntu, Uncategorized, Unity Leave a comment

Ok, I’ve had it with Ubuntu. Well, for now at least. I would like to eventually switch back and forth to get the greatest exposure. But, for now, goodbye Ubuntu (11.04)! Hello, Fedora 15.

It all started with Java problems. I have a little time tracker tool that I use to track my billable time at work. It is pretty ugly, but for me, it is critical — I use it to bill my time. Tuesday, I started noticing the program crashing with X errors. To attempt a fix, I tried to upgrade my video driver (Intel) to the latest version. I tried several PPA repositories, but none of them seemed to work for me. Finally, I ended up at the EMGD site. I am still not sure if that driver was compatible with my laptop, but I was desparate and frustrated! Somehow I got part of the packages installed, and I didn’t get the main EMGD installed. I ran the “sudo emgd-xorg-conf” command, and that is where I lost it. My X wouldn’t start; dhclient wouldn’t even connect my eth0. That was the last straw.

Another issue probably lead up to this problem. A week prior, I had attempted to copy a Tape to CD by running an audio cable from my tape player to my microphone jack on my computer. I used Audacity to record. Unfortunately, I couldn’t record anything via the microphone jack. No matter what I tried, it only recorded from the built-in microphone. I tried again to upgrade Pulse Audio with another PPA, but that didn’t help.

So, here’s what I have learned from Fedora in the first few hours:

I know now why I have stuck with Ubuntu for so long! Ubuntu is just so much easier to get up and running quickly. Command-line is avaliable, but not required.
Broadcom Wireless: In Ubuntu 11.04, I just enabled the STA driver in “Additional Drivers”. I don’t think I have even had to connect the laptop to the wired connection to download it. In Fedora, I had to install two repositories (easily done from the browser). Then, I ran a yum command from the terminal to install the driver. Finally, I had to reboot. Fedora’s instructions were very easily to follow, but comparing the two, Ubuntu wins hands down.
Libre Office: Where is it, Fedora? The first thing I do, is create a document and track all the changes I make to the installation so I can do it again on the next release. To my surprise, Fedora didn’t have Libre Office (or, any Document tool for that matter) installed by default. Furthermore, when I went to Add/Remove Software, there were tons of packages. I didn’t see a Meta package that would install a default set of packages. There was an Office package collection, but it said it was already installed. I ended up installing the package collection from the command line, and that did the trick.
Is RPM/Yum Slow? I haven’t done any comparisons or anything like that, but for some reason, the packages seem to install much slower in Fedora than Ubuntu. It may just be because I am ready to get working on my new install, but even individual package installs seem to take a while.
Gnome 3.0 versus Unity: it will take some time to form a good opinion. I am glad for the chance to compare.

Hopefully, you will hear from me more as I get to installing and configuring more. Stay tuned…

VMWare Player Broken for Kernel 2.6.39-3-generic

July 26, 2011 digitaleagle Uncategorized, Virtualization 10 Comments

I had a problem with VMWare Player this morning. So, here is my troubleshooting. Hopefully, it helps someone else.